As PHAM approaches five years, I’m learning that sometimes the hardest part of building something meaningful is believing in it long enough for others to see what you see.

Have you ever had an idea, dream or goal that felt almost too big?

The kind that excites you and scares you at the same time.

Then the voices start.

Who are you to do this?

That's too big.

What if nobody gets it?

What if it doesn't work?

Sometimes those voices come from other people.

Often, the loudest one is our own.

I know that voice well.

And almost five years ago, I had to decide whether I was going to listen to it.

The Why Behind PHAM

The Preventative Health Awareness Movement didn't begin because I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to start a movement.

The roots go back much further.

In many ways, everything I've built began with my own health journey.

Long before I was talking about patient empowerment, I was learning what it felt like to be the patient trying to navigate a complicated healthcare system—to search for answers, advocate for myself and desperately try to connect the dots.

That experience became part of the foundation for Wallis for Wellness.

And for more than 30 years as a Registered Massage Therapist, I had the privilege of working hands-on with thousands of patients and walking alongside them through incredibly challenging health journeys of their own.

I listened to their stories.

I witnessed the frustration of trying to navigate a complicated healthcare system.

Patients moving between practitioners, specialists, appointments and treatments—often left trying to put the pieces together themselves.

Healthcare professionals doing important work, but too often working in silos.

And people overwhelmed, scared and wondering:

Who's helping me connect all of this?

Over those three decades, the clinic served an incredible purpose. I loved that work, and I will always be grateful for what those clinic walls taught me.

But eventually, I began to feel pulled toward something bigger.

What if I could take everything I had learned through my own health journey and everything thousands of patients had taught me and bring those lessons beyond the clinic walls?

Not because I thought I had the answer to healthcare.

I don't, am I'm certainly not naive enough to believe there is a simple solution to something as complex as our healthcare system.

There isn't.

But complexity cannot become our excuse for doing nothing.

Because if everyone looks at a problem this big and thinks, What difference could I possibly make? - nothing changes.

Someone has to take a step, ask a different question.

Someone has to be willing to stand up and say:

Maybe I can be part of the solution.

For me, that meant asking:

Why aren't we doing more to educate people before a health crisis?

Why don't healthcare professionals collaborate more across disciplines?

Why are patients so often left trying to connect the pieces themselves?

And why isn't the patient empowered to recognize themselves as the most important member of their healthcare team?

Those questions followed me right out of the clinic.

And they became the foundation of PHAM:

Prevention over reaction.

Education over confusion.

Collaboration over competition.

And a healthcare culture where people feel:

Seen. Heard. Believed. Supported.

Wallis for Wellness began with my own health journey.

Thirty years inside the clinic deepened the why.

And PHAM became my way of asking:

How do we create a bigger ripple?

Big Ideas Can Feel Lonely

Here's the part of entrepreneurship that doesn't make the highlight reel.

Holding a vision before there's evidence it's going to work can be exhausting.

There are late nights, financial decisions, unanswered emails, pivots, ideas that flop and moments when you wonder whether you should just choose the easier road.

I've been an entrepreneur for my entire career. I have experience and confidence.

And I still have limiting beliefs.

How human of me.

That voice still occasionally asks:

Who are you to think you can make a difference in something as enormous and complicated as healthcare?

I've learned to answer it differently:

Who am I not to try?

You don't have to know exactly how the story ends before you're willing to begin.

Sometimes you simply have to keep doing the next piece of work.

And You Keep Doing the Work

Movements aren't built by declaring that you're building a movement.

They're built in the doing.

You educate, host the workshop, write, speak on stages, show up in communities and workplaces.

You make the introduction, you listen, collaborate and adjust.

And you keep painting the picture of what could be possible, even when not everyone can see it yet.

Then something begins to happen.

One person sees it.

Then another.

Eventually, someone stops simply believing in you and begins believing in the vision itself.

That's when the ripple starts.

This Summer, I Felt the Ripple

As we approach PHAM's 5th anniversary this February, something has shifted.

Healthcare professionals are increasingly putting up their hands and asking:

"How can I be part of this?"

PHAMbassadors are introducing other professionals.

People are volunteering their expertise and education.

Businesses, municipalities and organizations are opening doors.

And everyday people are becoming curious about prevention and what it means to get into the driver's seat of their health.

The movement is beginning to take on a life of its own.

And that may be one of the most humbling parts of this entire journey.

Because PHAM was never supposed to be about me.

My responsibility was to have the capacity to hold the vision, build the foundation and create enough room for other people to see themselves in it.

From One Idea to an Ecosystem

Today, more than 100 PHAMbassadors and climbing are part of this growing community.

We're bringing preventative health education into communities and workplaces.

Our collaborative preventative health book will be published later this year.

The Become the CEO of Your Health Hub is launching this fall.

New collaborations with healthcare professionals, businesses, researchers, universities, municipalities and community leaders are taking shape.

And alongside it, Wallis for Wellness 2.0 and the Beyond Your Scan Experience will bring innovative health technologies, education and meaningful next steps into communities across Ontario and beyond.

Different people, different professions, different projects.

One shared belief: healthcare can be better when we work together.

That's the ecosystem.

And it's the people, not the programs, that make it powerful.

Then Something Happened That I Didn't Expect

For years, I have talked about wanting people to feel:

Seen.
Heard.
Believed.
Supported.

This summer, my PHAMily gave those words back to me.

I have felt seen.

I have felt heard.

I have felt believed.

And perhaps most meaningfully right now:

I have felt supported.

My community has had my back. They've made introductions, opened doors, shared my vision, challenged my limiting beliefs when they creep back in.

But, most importantly, they have breathed belief and life into this movement when I've needed it myself.

There is something incredibly moving about building a philosophy for others and then realizing the community you helped create is now living it for you.

That's the Ripple Effect

One healthcare professional educates one person.

That person asks a better question.

One business brings prevention into its workplace.

One PHAMbassador introduces another.

One community opens its doors.

One person feels empowered enough to advocate for themselves.

And another ripple begins.

This is why collaboration over competition has never been just a tagline for me.

Healthcare is too complicated for any one profession or any one person to have all the answers.

We don't need everyone doing the same thing.

We need more of us rowing in the same direction.

Five Years In and We're Just Getting Started

To every PHAMbassador who believed when this was little more than an idea...

To those who joined somewhere along the road...

To the sponsors, businesses, municipalities and collaborators who opened doors...

And to every person who shared a post, attended an event, made an introduction, referred a colleague or simply told me:

Keep going.

Thank you!

Every one of those actions created another ripple.

And you've reinforced something about entrepreneurship that I wish more dreamers understood:

You don't need everyone to see your vision at the beginning.

You need enough courage to begin.

Enough belief to keep going when it's hard.

Enough humility to let the idea evolve.

And enough room around your table for other people to make the vision theirs, too.

Because eventually, something extraordinary can happen.

The vision stops belonging to one person.

It becomes ours.

An idea becomes a community, a community becomes a movement and enough ripples moving in the same direction?

They can create legacy change.

As we approach the 5th year of PHAM, I'm incredibly proud.

I'm humbled.

I'm grateful.

And even knowing there will be more hard days ahead...

I'm here for it.

To my PHAMily—thank you for breathing belief into this vision and, lately, breathing some of that belief right back into me.

We're just getting started.

Collaboration over competition. Always.💜